


Allusion

by TinyBat



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Henry knows what he's talking about, mad swan if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 11:23:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinyBat/pseuds/TinyBat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry points out the similarities between Emma and a certain noted literary character.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Allusion

**Author's Note:**

> I will swear up and down that Emma is the Alice of OUAT. The irony of it being a book she's actually read makes me smile. 
> 
> Mad Swan if you squint

Emma loved her new apartment, it suited her needs perfectly. She had a serious need to move out of her mothers apartment; so when she did, she got one with two bedrooms and Henry moved in. Emma loved it because it had a window seat off the kitchen and Henry would curl up in it with a book in his downtime; she would sit on the couch and Henry would occupy the window seat like a cat and they could slowly become a family in those moments.

Winter had come to Storybrooke and the small stack of books by Henry's window seat became an alpine slope of literature. He generally read whatever he liked and it was a source of pride for Emma to have a son who so dearly loved books when she hasn't at his age. His newest acquisition was making Emma nervous though. Nervous to the point where it evoked a visceral response. Emma could feel her brain forcibly shutting itself off when Henry opened his book.

Emma wasn't a reader but she had loved Alice's adventures when she was young and wanted more than anything to escape her life the way Alice had. She had a copy that was so frequently handled that it was falling apart. It was one of the few things she'd brought to town with her.

Her personal encounter with the Mad Hatter left an impression. For all of Jeffersons actions and motivations, for all of the emotional exchanges ; he had the nerve to be right on every single count that night in his house. Every word he said to Emma was the truth, he'd been an oracle to Emma's unwilling Savior. 

Henry and her father had both encountered him and apparently the return of his daughter had only proven to benefit him. Emma couldn't bring herself to see him though, both because she was still angry and because that night had been so wrought with strangeness and emotional vulnerability that reconciling the man and the odd character in her cherished book would just be too much. 

There was no shortage of weirdness on her life but part of that strange man, fictional or otherwise had a hold of her childhood. It was something tying the two separate and starkly defined sides of her life together. For now though, she'd forcibly shove it into the back of her brain and allow Henry to enjoy his book without any weirdness on her part.

"Hey Emma? Have you ever read this?" Henry was half slouched on the window seat waving his book at her. He didn't look like he was going to mess with her so she opted to answer honestly.

"Yeah, when I was your age. I liked that Alice had somewhere to go when she got sick of her life the way it was. Even if it was completely by accident." Emma answered, making a show of readjusting couch cushions and not looking her son in the eye. "I actually brought my copy with me here. I didn't take much from house to house when I was little but it ended up where ever I was."

Henry grinned like the cat in the illustrations on the page the book was open on. "You're actually a lot like Alice you know. I'm like your White Rabbit. You followed me down the rabbit hole to Storybrooke. All the things that have happened here are kind of like her going through Wonderland. And you fell down the rabbit hole again when you went through Jefferson's hat!" Henry sat up and swung his feet onto the floor. He leaned forward in a way that suggested that he wanted to gauge Emma's reaction.

Emma had done a lot of thinking about her place in life, and her place in Henry's book, but she hadn't given any thought to how her life mirrored her favorite book. But thinking on it now, Henry was absolutely right and Emma wasn't sure she was too happy about it. But it was a nice parallel even if the implications weren't great. 

" Henry, how do you think the book was written? If Wonderland exists, how did Lewis Carroll end up writing about it? Was he an Alice stand in too or do you think Alice was real?" Emma was curious now and she had the feeling that it would bother her until she had a satisfactory answer.

The grin from earlier spread even wider across the boys face, making the resemblance to the Cheshire Cat even more eerily apparent. "Well I know someone we can ask! I'm pretty sure he's at the library now. Grace said he's been helping Belle organize. If we go now we should be able to catch him before he leaves." Emma's heart stopped. She really should have thought this through, she wasn't looking for an interaction with the actual Mad Hatter. It hadn't occurred to her when she asked Henry that he'd immediately think to go find him. He'd see it as an opportunity to bombard the man with questions Emma wasn't sure he would be stable enough or willing to answer. At least Belle would be there as a third party so it might not be a huge disaster.

"I'll ignore the fact that you've made friends with his daughter if you promise not to ask him complicated or potentially upsetting questions. I'm not sure he likes me much and he might be busy. Besides, i'm sure there's someone else in town who'd know. if you're really set on it, i'll get the keys. After this though we're leaving it alone. No more pestering classic literature characters about dimensional anomalies!" Emma inwardly cringed at the thought of Henry going Lois Lane on Doctor Whale, she didn't want him to be up on all the gory details of grave robbing and resurrection.

She grabbed the keys, sighed in a resigned manner, and headed out the door with her son at her heels. She was going down the rabbit hole a third time, only now it was on purpose.


End file.
